A Structure Begins To Emerge

by syaffolee

I hadn’t thought too much about the structure of Temperance and the Devil beyond the premise, but I’m building it as I go along. It’s interesting because I’m doing something slightly different with the point-of-view than I normally do. I hadn’t planned on doing it; it just naturally turned out to be so.

I usually stick with one point of view–one character’s point of view–throughout the whole writing process unless I’m stuck in a rut and need to do something drastic to get myself going again. This time, though, I’m alternating point of view with each chapter: one for Temperance and the other for the Devil. It seemed to make sense to do it that way since they’re both main characters.

So I have a vague notion as to where I’m going with this, but meanwhile it’s just mostly banter and shootings.

* * *

Here’s an excerpt of a conversation between Temperance and the Devil from chapter 4:

He took another bite of the ice cream and moaned. If he had his way, he would be eating chocolate every day. Wait a minute. He did eat chocolate every day. Self-control didn’t exist for him.

“Stop making those noises. You sound like a stuck pig.”

“But I am a pig. A happy, happy pig. You should try this. Really. You’d swear it’s heaven.” He spooned up more ice cream and held it out to her. “Come on. Try it. Please.”

“I know why you think it tastes like heaven. It’s because it will be the closest you’ll ever get to it.”

“What, you think I wouldn’t eventually redeem myself?”

“You’ll never redeem yourself.”

He waggled the spoon in front of her. “Try it. Just taste it.” He could sense that she was torn about it, even though her facial expression remained calm. No one could resist triple chocolate. No one. He smiled triumphantly when she finally opened her mouth. He put the spoon in and watched as pleasure steal over her. Yes, Temperance could be tempted. And if he was tricky enough, he’d be doing far more wicked things to her mouth.

She took the spoon out of his hand and went in for more ice cream herself, even as she scowled at him. “Don’t you dare take this the wrong way. This doesn’t mean that I’d be amenable to any other depraved thing in your head.”

Every time I go back and reread something I wrote, I find errors. Sometimes they are small and insignificant, but sometimes there are so many and so blatant I wonder how I let it out in the first place. I am beginning to suspect that one of the foundations of good writing is just not making too many mistakes. Good editors are hard to come by.